The unseen truth
The dead will hear the voice of the Son of God,
And those who hear will live. John 5:25
Read Revelation 20:1—6
Here I read a vision. A seeing. A revelation. An insight into what God is doing behind history, behind the daily life I live, behind this day. The curtain is drawn back. I see Christ’s mighty work confronting the powers of sin, guilt, death, satan, and his enticements, confronting them on the cross and controlling them in his resurrection. Now it is Christ alone who has all authority. These adversaries to Christ I may still encounter in my daily struggle. But I regard them rightly as spent, as irritants exposed, as ultimately futile. And those precious faithful ones of the persecuted church who have surrendered their lives for Jesus and in Jesus, they have the true blessedness, more than the world-without-Christ promised but could not deliver.
Dear Lord Jesus Christ, I read that even in my present daily life you share with me the power of your resurrection. You who were bound in Pilate’s judgement hall, had sentence passed on you, crucified, dead and buried: you took upon yourself the judgement pronounced by Pilate, before him by the Jewish high priest; in fact you were given into the power of men, of humanity itself, and your name is thrown away as a curse. You, the Judge of all the earth, were judged in my place. Surely what has plagued me I should see now as locked away. You are the end of that, of the sullen, sullen memory of sins. And you are the beginning of what I have to call heaven. It is tasted now as bread and wine. It is celebrated now when I join in the songs in church. It is recognising you, and being recognised by you. It is communion. It is the unseen true truth.